


The Butterfly Effect

by itsallAvengers



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Author Isnt Smart And Doesnt Know How Time Travel Works, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, BAMF Tony Stark, Breaking Up & Making Up, Canon Compliant, Domestic Avengers, Everybody Lives, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, I fuckin guess????, Its Been A Rough Few Years, Itsallavengers Rewrites The Entire Marvel Universe, M/M, Parent Steve Rogers, Parent Tony Stark, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Time Travel, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 09:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18617755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsallAvengers/pseuds/itsallAvengers
Summary: While fighting with Loki, Steve Rogers from 2012 hears the two simple words:"Bucky's alive."And the whole universe ripples with the aftershocks.





	The Butterfly Effect

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I condensed the mcu into 20 thousand words and turned it into a stevetony event! Warning: I have NO idea how the timelines work and no idea whether this description is even accurate, and u know what? I don't care either. 
> 
> Essentially in this fic, Steve's words to his younger self while they're attempting to get the stones back accidentally triggers a chain of events that leads ultimately to Steve falling in love with Tony, both of them actually having a decent relationship, and changing the course of history as we know it.  
> Just bear with me here.

He was nearly there, he could feel the energy leaving Loki as Steve choked it out of him, and the whole goddamn day had been a nightmare filled with aliens and Demi-Gods thinking they were fit to rule the Earth, so honestly, Steve was taking quite a lot of pleasure out of this.

“Bucky’s alive,” the doppelganger whispered with his last puff of air, and oh. _Oh._

It caught him by surprise. He hadn’t been ready to hear such heart-clenching words. Bucky, Bucky, Bucky—it didn’t make sense, Loki shouldn’t even know about him, that had all been before his time on Earth, it couldn’t be tr—

Then Loki knocked him out, and Steve mentally fucking berated himself for being so stupid. Rule number _fucking_ one: **don’t let the enemy surprise you.**

He was floating through darkness as he hit the floor, and the last thing he saw was Loki’s version of him leap down the stairwell with the sceptre in hand.

 

-

 

“So, today was a bit of a royal fuck up, huh.”

Steve glanced up, looking over at Stark from across the room. He was stood by the doors of what was left of the common room with a half-empty glass of scotch in hand, while the other pressed up against the reactor. Steve had heard what had happened down in the stairwell—he knew that Loki had taken the Tesseract too.

It was… a massive fucking blow, to say the least. They’d tried so hard to stop him, and in the end, he’d run off with the two most powerful objects in the universe anyway.

Steve sighed and looked down at his own hands, clutching a sketchbook. He was a little lost in that moment, to be honest. Now the fight was over, he didn’t quite know what to do. He wanted to track Loki down, get the sceptre back. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid as to even let it go in the first place.

“Wasn’t your fault, you know.” And clearly Tony could see the guilt on his face, because he stepped further into the room until he was at the same couch where Steve was curled, and then perched himself delicately on the armrest. “He’s a God. He messed with all of us, created Diversions. We’ll get him. Next time he comes, we’ll get him.”

 _Next time,_ Stark said, already thinking ahead, up to the next crisis. Steve had to admire him for that. It must be completely fucking exhausting, always preparing for another catastrophe. He wasn’t even sure if Tony could help it. It was just who he was. A futurist.

Steve looked down again. On the paper, a half-formed smile that belonged to his childhood best friend stared back at him, the words from earlier still running around in his head. They’d never found a body, apparently. Despite the fact that the trainline was still in operation and he couldn’t have fallen far from it, they’d never found….

“He said something,” Steve blurted, loud enough to make Tony jump a little. It had been mere hours since their whole city had been on fire, and Steve could still see the tension in the other man’s eyes. “He said something to me, that threw me completely off. Surprised me. It was how he escaped and—and I _know_ that was the only reason he said it, I _know_ it’s stupid, but I can’t… I can’t—”

“It’ still knocking around in that head of yours, huh?” Tony finished for him, and Steve just nodded glumly. They were both silent for a moment, Tony sipping at his drink with slightly shaking fingers. He was very graceful with his actions, in a strange sort of way, and Steve watched him fascinatedly. They hadn’t gotten off to the greatest of starts, admittedly, but Tony was… he was interesting. Steve couldn’t exactly say that he liked the guy, but he knew that he’d been wrong about him. He’d seen that as soon as Tony had taken that nuke through the portal and thought that he was going to die.

Steve didn’t like him, not just yet. But he thought that he trusted him.

“What’d he say?”

He jumped, pulling himself from his own thoughts and looking into Tony’s curious eyes. There were still flecks of blood behind his ear from where he’d missed while he’d had a shower. Steve looked back down to his sketchbook and thumbed the rough lines of his drawing, teeth worrying at his lip.

It couldn’t be true. He knew it couldn’t be true.

“Said that Bucky—my best friend from back in the war, the one who I lost… he said that he’s alive.”

Tony’s eyebrows raised up to his forehead, and Steve couldn’t help but grin. Yeah. He felt that. “Oh, yowza, that’s a bit of a bombshell to drop in the middle of a fight, huh? Don’t blame you for losing your cool.”

Steve mentally repeated the word ‘yowza’ in his head, and then decided to immediately forget the word existed. “Shouldn’t have listened though,” he muttered, “letting my guard down because of a stupid lie? God, and they call me the world’s greatest soldier.”

“Pretty sure that wasn’t what Doctor Erksine wanted you to be, bud,” Tony waved off Steve’s self-deprecation easily while Steve just stared at him, confused. When Tony saw the look, he shrugged. “My dad was part of rebirth, remember? He told me everything that happened. Told me what Doctor Erksine said to you. ‘Not a perfect soldier, but—”

“—A good man,” Steve finished quietly, swallowing down the lump in his throat. He looked at his sketch again, thinking of all the experiments that had been done to Bucky before they’d made their escape. Thinking of the lack of a corpse, even though they’d looked for weeks and weeks, Steve putting all his considerable sway into getting a search party out there and helping.

What would a good man do?

“You believe it, don’t you,” Tony’s voice spoke up once more, softer than before. He was still rubbing his reactor almost nervously, like he expected it to give out at any moment. “You believe what he said about Barnes.”

And it felt stupid just to entertain it—Loki was a liar by birth and a cheat by nature, he’d do anything to get out of a fix, but… “I think I do. Yeah. I just have no idea what to do about it.”

The room fell into silence again, save for the clinking of ice against Tony’s glass as downed the remains and then smacked it back onto the broken coffee table. The weight of the tumbler seemed to be the final straw for the battered piece of furniture, and both of them watched as the frame caved in on itself and the glass shattered, sprinkling at their feet. Tony just watched it with a face of defeat. “I hate Loki. I just got this fucking place done up.”

Steve laughed, and Tony looked slightly surprised. Like he hadn’t expected Steve to find him funny. Sensing that Tony might want a bit of time to himself, Steve realised he’d sort of just welcomed himself into Stark’s home without a second thought, and he hastily stood up, an apologetic look on his face. “I should probably be getting gone,” he said, “don’t wanna hold you up. There’s probably a million and one things you need to do now, huh?”

“Damn right there is,” Tony sighed and then kicked sullenly at a broken table-leg, watching it roll into a crack in the room. “But there always will be. Such is the nature of a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist.” He smiled drily and then cocked an eyebrow at Steve, who flushed in embarrassment and prepared an apology for their earlier ’conversation’. But Tony waved it off before he could begin and then stood too, hands bracing his knees for support.

They looked at one another for a moment, the silence stretching out, and then Steve nodded jerkily and turned to go. “Thank you for letting me st—”

“You want help?”

Steve paused, turning back around. “Want help with what?”

“Finding him.” Tony waved a hand, always moving, always working. “Finding Barnes. I have resources that could be helpful. Surveillance. Contacts and the like. You could use ‘em.”

Steve gaped at him in bewilderment. Why the hell would Tony offer up something like that? It made no sense. Not only was Steve going off on the whim of a genocidal Norse Demi-God, but also, Tony didn’t really owe him shit. They weren’t friends. Steve had been an asshole to him and Tony had been an asshole back.

Although, maybe that was the point. Maybe this was an olive branch. Tony’s own way of saying sorry. And Steve was too desperate not to take it. So he turned around and smiled, and then stuck out a hand. With an amused little smile of his own, Tony took it and shook. “I would really appreciate that, yeah,” he murmured earnestly, “but where would we even start?”

Tony paused for a moment, and then looked down. “Come to my workshop. I’ve got some cool toys I can show you.”

So Steve did.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

And History changed.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Steve ended up spending a lot of his time in Tony’s workshop, after that. What had initially started out as a work-partnership in order for Steve to try and track down his long-dead best friend, became something of a… habit. Steve could admit, he didn’t have much in this time, didn’t have a place to call home or a comforting spot that made him feel just that little bit less alone. He’d been all set to head out, after the fight in New York. See some of what America had become. But then he’d gotten sidetracked with the whole searching thing, and Tony had offered up a guest bedroom in the tower for Steve after they’d spent the whole night down in the shop, Tony slowly explaining some of the new tech in the world, and it had kind of… stuck.

Steve stayed. With Tony Stark, of all people. Director Fury sure had been surprised when Steve had informed him that he would no longer be requiring his SHIELD barracks, because he was living with the same guy he’d been spitting at not only a few weeks ago.

But it happened. Steve didn’t leave, even when the worry and the doubt that he just didn’t belong here in this futuristic place with Tony set in, he still stayed. He pushed through. Because he wanted to try and find Bucky, and he wanted to at least goddamn attempt to integrate into the new world he’d been thrust into.

“Okay, so how much do you know about the electromagnetic spectrum?” Tony asked him, rolling backward on his chair until he came to rest by Steve’s side. They did this a lot- Tony would pick a new thing for him to learn about each day, some cool new invention or science improvement, and Steve would sit and take it all in. It was so much better than at SHIELD, where they just handed him a musty book and told him to go through it all, which he rarely did. Tony was so much more interesting, and Steve was fast growing to love learning about all the amazing things that the future had to offer.

Steve grinned, and then gave a half-hearted shrug. “Helps to heat up my food in that fancy microwave,” he said, and Tony rolled his eyes—and action that not only weeks ago, Steve may have taken offence to, thought that Tony was calling him stupid. But spending time with Tony had been informative, and he now knew that Tony was just teasing him.

“Okay, so we’ve got a lot to get through then,” the other man said as he flicked up one of the holographic screens in front of them both and then leaned back until he was shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve. He smelled like coconuts.

Steve relaxed, and let Tony teach him about the world.

 

-

 

Time passed.

The Avengers came together a few more times, taking down a few more big hostile situations that cropped up, HYDRA facilities and attempted takeovers and the like. They worked incredibly well together, Steve could see that from the get-go. Hell, even when they’d _not_ known one another they’d been an unstoppable force, and now, with training and knowledge and comradery on their side, they were damn near perfect.

He and Tony were a fluid power, fighting and communicating and battling as one. Natasha and Clint still spent most of their time at SHIELD base, and Thor tended to gallivant wherever he pleased, but seeing as Steve had ended up shacking up in the Avengers Tower, Bruce had ended up following suit a few months later, and the Tower had quickly become their base of operations.

It had quickly become… home.

And it was weird to think about. Steve ached for past—he missed it like a lost leg, something undeniably _gone_ from him that it hurt just to think about. But here, now… it wasn’t so bad, now that Steve had just allowed himself to get attached. Tony had become his best friend of this new time, and his sharp teasing and gentle smiles and explosive temperament had found itself lodging right into Steve’s heart, becoming something he didn’t want to live without. The new world was terrifying and big and lonely, but staying in the tower with Tony had been the best decision he could have made. It gave him purpose. It gave him… hope.

It gave him Tony.

He looked sideways, smiling wryly as Iron Man arced through the air and twisted through the trees, taking down gunner after gunner with practised ease. He’d updated his armour again since the last time Steve had seen him: Tony had been on a long-haul business trip on the West coast, so Steve hadn’t been with him in a good few months, except for week after the Mandarin attack when Steve had gotten the plane over to Malibu in order to help try and find Tony’s body in the wreckage of his home there, and then (Thank God, thank _fucking_ _God_ ) found out that Tony was actually alive. He’d met up with Tony at the hospital where he’d been checked into and essentially barred him from leaving until the Doctor’s saw fit, shooting Tony stony glares each time Tony even so much as mentioned departing before he was suggested to.

Steve had realised, in those moments when he’d rushed through the hospital in a frantic search for Tony’s room, nearly beside himself with panic and fear and goddamned delirious _happiness_ at knowing Tony was okay, that he may possibly have felt a little more deeply for the man than just friendship. Looking back, it was obvious that it had been like that from the very beginning. Steve had friends here, he had colleagues. The rest of the Avengers had taken Steve’s lead after a while and come to live in the tower too, and so Steve had ended up finding a strange sort of kinship in all of them. He loved them, and he cared for them deeply.

But not like the way he cared for Tony. That felt… different. Burned harder, sharper, more painfully and fiercely. He’d been at the gym when he’d seen the news on the TV of Tony’s house being burned to bits, of everyone saying he was dead, and to say that the bottom had dropped from his world was an understatement. It was like being pushed into a new world all over again, lonely and terrifying and completely unfathomable. He’d been beside himself with panic, the prospect of losing his very first anchor to the future being something he couldn’t even bear to think about.

But he hadn’t. Tony had survived, and Steve had come to the conclusion that he was deeply in love with him, and life had moved on.

 

-

 

Tony kissed Steve on a Wednesday, the same night that he told the man to stop the surveillance for Bucky.

“Huh?” Tony said when he declared it, only half listening as he soldered something or another onto one of his wiring boards. Steve swallowed and folded his arms on the couch, looking at the curve of Tony’s back, the peek of skin showing between the waistband of his jeans and the hem of his shirt.

“I think we should stop looking for Bucky.”

Tony paused what he was doing then, looking up and turning in surprise. “What? Why?”

Steve just sighed and leaned back. The truth was, neither of their hearts were in it anymore. Tony still had the searches going on in the background, every day looking for new information, but nothing had come up, not in the months and months and months since they’d started this. Steve had found new reasons to come down to Tony’s workshop, become distracted with other things, healthier things. They hardly even looked at the damn thing anymore.

Steve knew, looking back, that the words Loki had whispered to him had been just that: words. Empty. Designed to throw him off.

Bucky was gone.

“Tony, when I started this, I was still… trying to find a link back home,” he said quietly, watching as Tony swivelled on his chair and then pushed it forward, rolling along the tiles until his legs hit Steve’s with a gentle bump and he was looking down at Steve with his elbows braced on his knees, an intense expression covering his face. He was so very beautiful. “All I wanted was a friend. Someone that I could, I dunno, share all my pain with. Someone who understood. So when I was fighting Loki, and he told me that Bucky was alive, I—I latched on. I wanted to believe it because I couldn’t handle the reality. I couldn’t handle the fact that I really was alone here.”

Tony’s face fell, and he looked down, his fingers settling on Steve’s knee. “I know it means nothing, but I really am sorry that you… that that was how you were feeling, Steve—”

“Yeah, but see, that’s the thing.” Steve leaned forward and rested on his own knees, suddenly coming no more than an inch away from Tony’s face and looking at him with a smile. “It was how I _was_ feeling. Past tense. Because… because in trying to get him back, in coming down here with you, I found what I was looking for. I found a friend. Someone who understood me, and could help me with my pain. Tony, I found a home here.” He looked up at the ceiling, looked over to DUM-E as the bot tried (and failed) to sweep the floor. “I found you, and the team, and I learned all about the future and it became less terrifying and more… reality. It took a while to come to terms with it. But you helped me so much, Tony, and I don’t know how to thank you for that.”

Tony’s eyes were wide and somewhat disbelieving as he looked at Steve. Steve was a little confused as to where he was going with all this too, but he persisted, if only to get it all off his chest. On a whim, he grabbed Tony’s hands and held tight, his fingers curling easily around the man’s slim wrists. Tony looked down at them blankly, and Steve squeezed.

“I don’t need to hold onto the hope that I can find him any more, Tony,” he whispered, shaking his head. It hurt to say. It would probably always hurt. But he had to move on. He had to. “Bucky… was my best friend. And he died. And I wanted to cling on, because I had nothing else. But this is a wild goose chase, Tony, you know that. I think you probably did from the very start, so thanks for humouring me I guess.” Tony chuckled lightly, a little wet, and Steve pushed on. “So I want to turn off the searches that we haven’t checked in two months anyway. I want to let him rest. Can we?”

Tony said nothing for a moment, and then he breathed out heavily. “Wow. You’re good at speeches, Steve, anyone ever tell you that?” When Tony looked up, he was smiling brightly, his eyes wet. “I’m glad you found a home, Steve. And—and I’m glad I found you, too. I don’t think you know how much.”

“I think I can give it a decent guess,” Steve’s voice was quiet and soft and he realised their hands were still tangled in one another’s, faces nearly nose-to-nose in the quiet of the workshop. There was a little bit of marker-pen smudging Tony’s jaw, and Steve wanted to lick his thumb and rub it off in the way his mother had done to him. He wanted a lot of things.

And, apparently, Tony did too. Because he hovered for a second, just a single second, and then tilted his head and leaned down, capturing Steve’s mouth in the softest of kisses. It was obviously nervous, Tony’s mouth barely even pressing against his own, and the world was roaring so loudly in his ears at that point that Steve didn’t think he’d have been able to concentrate on anything else if he’d tried.

So instead, he curled his hand around Tony’s neck and he kissed back.

 

-

 

“Oh my God, why Washington?” Tony complained over his toothbrush, waving a sulky hand as he leaned down to the sink and spat out the toothpaste. Through the open door, Steve watched him in amusement from the bed, trying not to smile while Tony went on one of his rants. “Like, okay, I get you’re a SHIELD lackey and Natasha batted her eyes at you to come with her so she wouldn’t be lonely or whatever, but Washington? That’s such a boring fucking place. Nothing happens in DC, I’m telling you Steve, you won’t want to stay there for more than a minute.”

“I can’t decide whether this anger is you trying subtly to say you’re going to miss me or just genuinely focused on your hatred for Washington DC,” he informed Tony as the man pouted at his own reflection and combed his damp hair back off his face. He was wrapped in a towel around the waist, fresh out of the shower, and Steve appreciated the wonderful curves of his lover while the man continued to rant sulkily about Steve’s imminent departure.

“It’s both. DC sucks and you not being here sucks,” Tony informed him with an accusatory finger, finally walking out of the bathroom and then flopping onto the bed dramatically, right across Steve’s chest. The air left his lungs in a rush and he wheezed, sighing when Tony got his damp hair all over Steve’s neck. “You shouldn’t be allowed to leave this bed. Hey—how do you feel about becoming a kept man?”

Steve burst out laughing and wrapped his arms around Tony’s lower back, leaning up to kiss his nose. “I would last two minutes and then break everything you own out of boredom, sweetheart, you know me.”

With another pout, Tony let his chin fall onto Steve’s sternum. “Yeah,” he muttered, “I do. _Fine_. Go fight crime in DC for a few months until your contract is over. Make some friends. Don’t die. And I don’t care if you’re trying to save the world, alright, you call me every night or I’m gonna fly over there and kick your ass, capiche?”

“Clingy,” Steve muttered as he trailed his fingers up the knobbles of Tony’s spine and down again, a soft smile on his face. Tony leaned down and captured his mouth in an easy kiss, tasting like toothpaste. “I love you. I’ll be back before you know it. I’m sure it’s all gonna be boring as hell, just like you said.”

Tony huffed. “I’m never wrong.”

 

Of course, Tony couldn’t have been more wrong.

HYDRA. SHIELD. Project Insight.

 _Bucky_.

All that time they’d been searching, and they’d never heard a peep. He’d just thought Loki had been lying all those years back, but then… God, and Steve had fucking abandoned the search. He’d let Bucky down, again.

His best friend had been a murder weapon for seventy years. While Steve had gotten the peace of a coma, Bucky had become HYDRA’s pet. Their unwilling killing machine. Loki had known, and he’d… he’d told Steve, and—

And it was all just a fucking mess.

One that was made infinitely worse by the knowledge that his best friend had been the one to kill Tony’s parents.

Steve knew that Tony had a strange relationship with them, but it was clear to see that at the very least, he’d loved his mother. Howard had been, in Steve’s opinion, a shitty father and a shitty man toward the end, but Tony had always held a strange sort of respect for him, and he’d clearly been a pivotal part of Tony’s life too. It had nearly killed him when they’d died; Steve knew because he’d seen the old news articles. _Tony Stark off the rails. Tony Stark hospitalized. Tony Stark overdose._

Steve had been going to tell him, when it had all been cleared up. He had. It was important—more than important, it was vital that Tony knew. For closure’s sake. Tony still had files about the brake system of the car that had killed them, and every year on their anniversary, he pulled it up and looked through it again, just to see if he’d missed anything in the last twenty years.

Steve saw Tony in the hospital with Sam when he woke up after all of it, gently bobbing his head to Marvin Gaye as it played tinnily through Sam’s phone, and he knew he had to tell him. But then Tony kissed him, frantic and gentle, his fingers combing through Steve’s hair and his eyes observing every cut and bruise as he asked Steve how he was doing, whether he needed anything, and it was clear he was immensely distressed. Steve didn’t want to add to that. It wasn’t the right time, Sam was there… he couldn’t.

And then they got home, and Tony already had the search-system set back up again, and he told Steve that “we’ll find him, baby. We will. We’ll find him and we’ll make sure he’s safe, and maybe try and help him, how does that sound?”-- And it was too important that he had Tony on side to risk that with the truth of what he knew. Bucky needed Tony more than he needed Steve. Because Tony could actually help. Maybe he could break through the programming, or find Bucky with all his fancy tech.

Bucky needed Tony. Steve needed Tony too.

_Tony Stark off the rails, Tony Stark hospitalized, Tony Stark overdose._

Steve couldn’t let that happen again. Who knew how hard Tony would lose it if he knew? What if he refused to help? Steve couldn’t put Bucky’s one chance at salvation on the line like that, he _couldn’t_ , he—

He kept his mouth shut. Just until they got Bucky back, and things had settled down. Steve would tell him then.

For now, he just leaned his forehead into Tony’s shoulder and tried not to hate himself too much for it.

 

-

 

2016.

The accords.

Bucky, again.

Tony’s horrified, blindingly betrayed face would haunt Steve for the rest of his life.

_‘Don’t bullshit me, Steve, did you know?’  
‘Yes.’_

 

He hadn’t had a choice. Tony had been in the depths of an episode that not even Steve could pull him out of, not this time, because it was his fault. And if it had just been them in that bunker, if Bucky’s life hadn’t been on the line too, then Steve wouldn’t even have bothered to fight back. He knew he deserved it. But Bucky _had_ been there, and Tony had been so blinded with rage and trauma that he was beating into Bucky in a way that might not have been fixable if he caught the wrong place, and Steve couldn’t let Bucky die and he knew that Tony wouldn’t want to kill him, not really—so Steve fought him.

Steve fought him and he wished he’d done everything fucking differently, wished he hadn’t been such a fucking coward, wished that he hadn’t let down the one person who meant more to him than anything—but he had done all of that, he’d blown everything that mattered to him and now he was facing the consequences.

Tony wasn’t stopping, and Steve knew he wasn’t going to beat him unless he did something drastic. Tony’s reactor wasn’t a part of him any more, but it still powered the suit. He’d be okay.

Steve broke it.

“I trusted you,” Tony whispered from underneath him, blood all over his face, words breaking as they left his mouth, and Steve wished he was dead.

Tony wouldn’t want Steve to help him back to safety. Steve knew him well enough for that. So he steeled his face and he grabbed Bucky and sent a distress signal on Tony’s behalf, trying not to think about the fact he was leaving his lover and his whole life behind in the snow.

 

-

 

They didn’t talk.

 

Steve gave him the phone for emergencies, and sometimes Tony texted him addresses and Steve would go and they’d end up having sex, and then Tony would leave without a word and Steve knew that he wouldn’t get away with asking for anything more. He’d only tried once, taking Tony’s wrist as he was getting up to slip on his Tshirt and whispering the smallest plea for him to _‘please, please, can we just… can we just talk’.  
_Tony had gone totally nuts, screaming at him until his voice got caught in his throat and he started to choke up. Steve was so distraught by the sight of Tony like that that he just hadn’t had it in him to try again.

So he went on with his life. He stayed in Wakanda and thought about the fact he’d just lost everything, _again_ , and then he’d wait religiously by his phone until Tony next messaged him. It was pathetic. He was pathetic.

He’d kept the truth from Tony while they’d been together because he was a coward and a bastard, and this was his reward.

Every day, Steve wished that he’d done things differently. Wished that he’d just had the fucking sense to say something. In hindsight, he knew that Tony wouldn’t have stopped searching for Bucky. Or, at the very least, he wouldn’t have stopped Steve from searching. Tony was a hero and a good man, and it would have hurt him, but not nearly as much as it had from finding out in the way that he had.

Steve’s fault.

From what he heard these days, Tony was busy with the political side of the accords debate, doing his level best to grant the avengers immunity while the global threats continued to rage on around them. He was tired, it was clear to see. Weary.

That was Steve’s fault, too.

Bucky was doing well though, and Clint and Scott had been able to go home and see their families, so that was good. Steve focused on training as much as he could, saving people wherever they needed saving. That was all he had left to do. It was the only thing he still cared about, really. All he had left to do.

Everything else he’d loved about the future was gone, and now he just had to carry on. Let the months pass by and try to wade through them.

 

-

 

When Steve heard about the ship that had settled down over New York—about Tony going missing, presumed dead again, Steve felt like he’d just been gutted.

No. No, that couldn’t be true, they hadn’t had a chance to…  they’d been supposed to come to sort of conclusion. They’d been supposed to find some peace, even if it wasn’t the sort of peace that Steve had been craving. Anything at all would have been better than… than Tony dying, fighting a battle on his own on the other side of the world. That had never been how things were supposed to go. It was supposed to be _together_.

No.

He’d survived death before. He could do it again. Tony was stronger than that, and Steve just had to have faith in him.

He’d be okay. He told the team as much as they set off on the Quinjet to go and join the fight, and everyone looked at him like he was crazy but he didn’t fucking care. He knew Tony. It had been two years, but dammit, Steve still fucking knew him. And in knowing him, Steve knew also of his resilience. Of his determination and bravery and goddamn refusal to lay down and die. And if Steve didn’t hold onto that hope inside him, then he wouldn’t have a chance in hell of fighting well enough to win.

Tony would be okay. Steve bet his fucking life on it.

He held onto that hope and let it burn through him as he stood in Wakanda and faced off with Thanos’ army. Now that they were staring into the eye of the tiger, Steve felt something settle under his gut and pull taut, sending his back straighter and his jaw tighter. He realised it was understanding. Knowledge that it was really, really unlikely he was going to be getting out of this alive. If Thanos was anything like what Bruce had been saying, then maybe not even the Avengers could hold them back. Maybe this was it.

He stood there, side by side with Bucky and Natasha, and thought of everything he wished he’d just fucking said. They’d gotten years together, but it still hadn’t felt like nearly enough time. He wanted to see Tony just once more. He wanted to say how sorry he was. How he knew it wouldn’t be enough, but he wanted to try anyway. He wanted to say that he loved him—always had, always would. That Tony had given him a reason to want to live in this new world, and without him, Steve wasn’t sure what the hell he would have done.

He wanted Tony to know that he had always, always been Steve’s sure thing, and that if he had a time machine that could take him anywhere he wanted to go, he wouldn’t even go back to the forties. He hadn’t wanted that for a long time now. He’d just go back and change the decision he’d made to hide the knowledge from Tony, and then none of this would have fucking happened, and they wouldn’t have split up and gone to opposite ends of the goddamn globe, and Steve would still be able to hold him in his arms at night and kiss him in the morning and fight side by side with him on the battlefield. It would have been everything Steve had ever God-damn wanted.

Instead, he was here, and Tony was somewhere in space, and they were all about to die because of a maniacal Titan’s flawed grasp of basic economics.

Brilliant.

“You ready?” Bucky asked him quietly, and Steve cocked his head a little, keeping his eyes on the target ahead as he shrugged.

“How does someone exactly get ready to fight an intergalactic army intent on wiping out half of the universe?”

Bucky just shrugged, fiddling with his gun. “I dunno. I was thinking some calf stretches.”

“I’d say we probably have more experience than most, anyway,” Natasha interjected with a small smile as she nudged Steve’s middle. “We’ve fought about ten times as many aliens as the rest of these guys. We’ve won this before. We’ll do it again.”

Steve smiled back, but it was heavy. “Last time, we had Iron Man,” he murmured, “we had Thor. We had a team.” Last time aliens had come through trying to take over London, the Avengers had been a cohesive unit that worked together seamlessly, Iron Man and Thor offering air support while Clint, Nat and Steve worked on the ground and the Hulk did some concentrated smashing. They’d wrapped up in under four hours, Steve rolling his eyes when he saw Tony do his trademark Iron-Man landing beside him, lift up his faceplate and then dip Steve in his arms to give him a smack on the lips.

Natasha was quiet, and Steve figured she was probably remembering that day too. Maybe minus the kissing. “Well, guess we just gotta make do with whatever it is we have left,” she said, unsheathing a pistol as the creatures started to scrabble through the energy wall. Steve nodded, and when he caught her eye, there was something knowing in them. “He loved you too, you know,” she said softly, so that no one else could hear it but them, “even afterward. I spoke to him about it once, when I visited. He still loved you, Steve.”

She was saying it because she might not get another chance to, and Steve… Steve wasn’t even sure how to process it. He didn’t even have time, anyway—a few seconds later, and the barrier was opening, beasts starting to swarm into Wakanda with feral screams and razorblade teeth. Steve took in a breath and shoved it all down, the same way he always fucking did—No time, no time, there was _never enough fucking time_ , it was Steve’s goddamn curse. A hundred years of being alive and less than half of that spent actually living, you’d have thought he’d have learned by now to stop waiting around for things to happen and just go after them himself.  

Steve should have found him. He should have gone and just talked it through, not been afraid of the consequences or the yelling, he should have just gone—

His first dug into the first beast he came into contact with, and he stopped the thoughts from coming. Just fight. That was all he could do.

 

-

 

They tried so hard. They all did.

It wasn’t enough.

Thanos arrived, and he already had all the stones with him, save for the one in Vision’s head. They came at him, fearless, knowing that it wouldn’t work. Steve looked behind him, saw Wanda gearing up to land the final blow on Vision, and his heart curdled with agony. No one ever seemed to get their happy ending. No one got to just love without complication, and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair. Steve had done everything to try and let Wanda escape that fate, knowing what his own reaction would have been if killing Tony was the only way to destroy the stone. He wasn’t sure whether he would have done it. The national Hero, a man chemically engineered into a soldier, and he still didn’t think he’d be able to make that play.

 _“Pretty sure that wasn’t what Doctor Erskine wanted you to be, buddy,”_ Tony’s voice filtered through his head, the memory of one of their first civil conversations straight after the battle of New York. Tony had always made sure to remind him of that. He’d always believed it—hell, on more than one occasion he’d called Steve a truly abysmal soldier, which, frankly, was true. Steve viewed rules more like guidelines and he didn’t care for the orders of men who’d never even seen a battle before. The only reason he hadn’t been discharged at all was because of his title as Captain America.

He looked behind him again, just for a second as he sprinted up toward Thanos, and privately thanked Wanda for being brave enough to do something he never could.

The gauntlet was heavy under his hands, incredibly so, but he held up for as long as he could, until the air was pushing out of his lungs in a scream of desperation, just trying to do anything that would hold him back. Thanos looked at him, and Steve felt like an ant.

It was over in a second, and by the time Steve came back to consciousness again, the damage was done.

Half the universe died. The world fell into chaos.

 

The survivors regrouped, all of them numb. Steve did a count of who they’d lost, and then threw up in the bathrooms. There was dust all over his hands. He wondered if it was symbolic.

So much had been lost that he wasn’t even sure he could feel anything any more. It was all just… empty.

They went back to the compound, over in New York. The remaining Avengers—the ones who’d survived Thanos and his decimation, tried to evaluate it all. Natasha found some sort of pager left by Fury, and they hooked it up to a battery and kept it running, just in case. Of what, they had no idea. Salvation, maybe. Hope.

Steve looked up to the sky each night and waited for Tony to come home. He knew he was up there, somewhere. He’d gone up in that ship, and he would come back. Steve was sure of it. This was the only bit of hope he had left now, and he couldn’t let go of it.

“This isn’t healthy, buddy,” Natasha told him, voice quiet as she opened the door to the roof. Steve’s hands were curled around the railings, neck craned up to the sky. He knew it was stupid, that he probably looked a fool. But it was just… comforting. To know that somewhere out there, Tony was coming back. “It’s been four days, no sign. If he wasn’t killed in the fight on that ship, there’s a fifty-percent chance he was taken in the—”

“Don’t,” Steve gritted sharply, finally looking down and glaring at the lake below them. He heard the metal groan under his grip. “Don’t say that, Natasha, not now.”

He thought back to her words from the fight. About how Tony had never stopped loving him. And it was… God, it felt so dumb, but in a strange way, Steve wasn’t even surprised by it. Because he and Tony had just always felt so… integral. To everything. They’d always been the gears that worked together, always been what drove the team, they’d always made each other _better_. In a way, it had felt like their relationship was the foundation of this entire universe. At least to Steve it was anyway. Because without him, look what had fucking happened. Look how hard Steve had fallen.

The universe had relied on Steve and Tony to be a team, and Steve had let the universe down.

A hand fell softly onto his fist, small and warm. Steve looked sideways at Natasha and tried to copy her smile, but it fell flat. “I need him to come home, Nat,” he choked, “I don’t… this is the only thing I have even the faintest of hope in. Even if it’s unfounded. Even if I know deep down that you’re probably…” He looked away and shut his eyes. Not thinking about that. Absolutely not. “I just have to hold onto this. I have to.”

She didn’t say anything, and for a moment he wondered whether she was thinking of a counter-argument, a plea for him to let it go. But she didn’t. Instead, she shuffled a little closer and rested the side of her head onto his shoulder. “Do you remember when the whole team got arrested in Japan that one time?” She said—and the memory was so out of place and surprising that it made Steve burst into an unexpected laugh.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” That’d been a complete goddamn nightmare, involving way too much alcohol, a bar fight and a brief bomb threat. Steve had gotten yelled at by the President, and Tony had laughed at him fondly while poking at Clint’s new tramp-stamp that he’d drunkenly decided to get. “Did we ever get told we were allowed back into the country, or are we still banned?”

“Still banned,” she said lightly, “not very surprising. If Thor goes back there, he _will_ start some sort of war.”

Steve smiled, and it turned into a laugh, and then into something wetter, until suddenly he realised that there were tears falling down his face and his eyes were burning, chest heaving with each hitching breath. Natasha pulled him in easily, and Steve wondered whether she was crying too, or whether there just wasn’t enough left in her for it.

Something sounded up above him, a strange sort of crackling noise, and Steve looked up hastily, eyes widening as he clocked the strange bright light that was hurtling toward them. For a second he thought it might be a meteor, but it was moving too erratically for that, and… it looked sort of like a person. Natasha had seen it too, and their sadness turned into battle-mode, both of them reaching for their weapons as the bright light careered down toward them.

It stopped about twenty feet away from the edge of the compound, hovering in the air for a moment, bright enough that Steve could hardly even see a thing. He lifted his hand to shield himself from the light, but a moment later it dimmed back, revealed something…

Human.

“Where’s Nick Fury,” the woman said, voice hard, face tight—and Steve realised, for the first time, that the universe was bigger than just them.  
And Thanos had just made that universe very, very angry.

 

-

 

18 days in, and they got a distress signal.

Steve had been the first to hear it. Sat in Tony’s workshop in the compound, drawing like he always had and pretending everything was normal, he’d suddenly realised that there was the faintest little beeping noise coming from somewhere around Tony’ desk. FRIDAY was still online, but she no longer operated any of the equipment in Tony’s workshop, so Steve assumed something must have started malfunctioning. He looked up and waited for the beeping to stop.

It didn’t, so he frowned and sat himself up from the couch, gently placing his sketch onto the arm-rest. It was a picture of Tony, of course. Drawn as if in front of him, as if they’d never left this spot. His shirt was still riding up in the sketch, the same way it always did. His hair was still messy and there was still grease where it shouldn’t be.

Just like before, he thought, a bittersweet feeling curdling in his gut as he made his way over to the desk and tried to find the source of the sound. It wasn’t difficult to spot; a spare helmet, half-way through repairs and looking more than a little bit worse for wear. Steve smiled fondly and the sight of it, picking it up and searching curiously for what was making the noise. When he saw the red dot flashing within it, the smile became a frown. Tony had told him before that he could relay visual and audio messages from one suit to the other; usually floor plans or objects that he needed a clear conceptualised idea of. Which meant that… that there was a message in there that must have just come through from one of the iron man suits.

His breath stopped half-way through his mouth, and he felt himself stiffen up.

Tony.

Before he was even aware that he was moving, his feet were flying through the workshop and running over to the main conference room where he knew at least a few of the Avengers must be. He needed them all to see this, just so he could confirm that he hadn’t actually gone insane. Of course, most of them were in there, as they always were, still trying to bring some order to a world that had fallen into total chaos. He could see Carol and Thor standing together through the glass windows, pointing at a holographic image while they talked to the rest of the team. Carol clocked him first, her brow creasing in confusion just for a second before Steve hurtled through the doors so hard that it came straight off its hinges. He grabbed it hastily before it could hurt anyone and rested it back against the wall before slamming the disused helmet onto the table, its beep emanating through the room.

Everyone looked at him, and he realised he was shaking violently. “That’s a message,” he said, and Rhodey’s face cleared of is confusion, the penny dropping as he gaped at Steve.

“FRIDAY,” Rhodey snapped, lurching forward jerkily and resting his hands at each side of the helmet on the table while everyone crowded around, “FRIDAY, what does—is this—”

“Can’t know for sure, he disconnected it from my system while he was upgrading it,” the AI responded immediately, “but I’m accessing it as we speak and I’ll show you as soon as I reach it.”

Steve couldn’t move, all of his limbs pinned in place. Someone told him to breathe, and he ignored them. It felt like it would be too loud in this room. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on the helmet in front of him, still beeping away, proof that someone, somewhere, had managed to get a message through across the cosmos.

A second later, the helmet’s eyes flickered white, and everyone jumped as a projection of Tony suddenly appeared on the floor in front of them, resting against a wall, looking straight forward. Steve stared at it in anguish. Tony was… beat. His eyes sunken, skin greyish even through the projection. And he was thin. Oh god, now Steve was looking, he was really really fucking thin—

“Stowaway’s log, day 13,” Tony said cheerily, a small smile cracking his tight face as he leaned his head back against the wall, “uhh, same as always. Trying to teach my new Robot friend how to play games. She seems intrigued, but I’m kind of terrified about getting her into a competitive state. If I beat her at this next round of paper football I genuinely think she’ll rip my arm off, and right now, I really couldn’t use another blow like that.”

Everyone was staring in disbelief, but at that, most of them laughed. It was so inherently Tony to still be cracking jokes right now, that the familiarity of his actions was an overwhelming comfort to the situation.

“Scar’s healing up nicely,” he continued, patting his midsection, and Steve felt like there must have been 12 other messages that hadn’t gotten through which explained that, “no infection, and again, Nebula was useful in patching me up so I didn’t just bleed to death in the ship. Gotta get her some flowers or something. Uh…” He looked down at his hands and inspected his nails, a nervous habit of his when he was gearing up to say something. Steve just waited. They all did. “Uh, I’m pretty sure this message will get to someone some day. However long it takes for the transmission to cross the galaxy. I’ve amped up the signal as much as I can, but… I dunno how much longer I’ve got up here. Oxygen’s running out. Food’s low. There’s a chance that I’m—that this recording is coming from a ghost now.”

No, no. They still had time. They still had… it’d be fine. Tony was thin, he was injured, but he’d be okay. He could walk through hell and be okay, that was just who Tony was. Steve nodded to himself, and maybe everyone else thought that was finally some sort of acknowledgement that Tony might not be coming home, but they were wrong. It was Steve promising himself that he _would_.

“It’s either gonna be Rhodey or Steve that gets this, seeing as you’re the ones most likely to be nosying around in my shop, so, uh—Rhodey, if you’re there, then I’d just like to say that I’m offended you didn’t suit up to help me out when the giant donut fell from the sky. Dick move, bro, and I’m gonna totally beat you up for that when I next see you. I had to deal with a group of the galaxy’s biggest idiots all on my own.” He rolled his eyes and smiled again, and across the room, Rhodey did too, arms folding as he shook his head fondly. Then Tony’s face fell, and he looked down again. Everyone’s head turned to face Steve in the room.

“And Captain Asshole,” Tony continued with forced vigour, “if you’re the one who’s seeing this, then. Well. Fuck you, I guess. This? This is exactly what I was talking about when I said that somethin’ bigger was coming. Hell, maybe you’re not even… maybe—” he coughed and then huffed, shaking his own head to himself. “God, who am I kidding. Course you’re still alive. Not even God could put you down, could they Steve? Fuck.”

The silence filled the room straight up, the holograph of Tony sitting staring at his knees being the only thing visible in Steve’s whole world. He wished… shit, he wished for so many things. A second try. Some more time. A two-way video, so Steve could talk back. He got none of that, though, and wishing would only make all this worse.

For now, Tony was in front of him. He was still alive, despite everything- the snap hadn’t gotten him, and clearly neither had Thanos himself. That had to be enough, for now.

“Steve,” the familiar voice, with all of the inflections Steve had used to hear in the mornings when the world was easier and softer and Tony still cared about him, spoke up through the room again. The acidity in his tone was gone now, and Tony’s face broke out into a tired smile as he shut his eyes and side. “Oh, Steve. You stubborn, reckless, selfish asshole. I wish… well, for a lot of things. Mostly that we’d been together when this went down. Maybe it wouldn’t all have gone so wrong.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. I never gave you a chance to apologize, to even try and fix things. Too angry, I guess. Too bitter. But you know— well, I suppose you don’t, but—I, uh. I never stopped. Loving you, that is. Hell, there were plenty of times when I wished I could. Plenty of times when I hated your guts. But even then, I still… yeah. You’re still my sure thing, Rogers.” He glanced up and quirked his mouth upright, probably remembering every time when Steve had been the one to tell him that, arms wrapped around Tony’s midsection and holding him tight as they laughed together.

Steve felt like the universe in all its entirety was pressing down around him. It was one thing to hear it from Natasha. It was another thing entirely to hear it in Tony’s voice, on Tony’s face, looking at a projection of the man he loved while he wasted away on some sort of space-ship in the endless galaxy.

“I should probably get a bit of shut-eye,” Tony said eventually, after the next round of silence got too long, “been a long day of doing nothing again. Wish I was wherever this message is being transmitted to. Rhodey, Steve—whoever the hell it is watching this, you gotta do me a solid and keep going, alright? Save people. Possibly fix everything. You know the drill.” He sighed, sadness and regret radiating off his body as he shuffled upright and then raised a hand to what Steve had to assume was his own helmet. “See you all on the other side.”

The projection flickered off, and the room was left in total quiet. Steve stared at the place where Tony’s body had been just seconds ago, and then felt his knees give up on him. He slumped down against the wall, elbows bracing his knees as he scraped fingernails through his hair. He felt fucking dizzy.

Tony was out there, somewhere. He was still alive, and he still loved Steve, despite all of it. Steve hadn’t been going mad.

“We have to get him,” Natasha said it first, looking around the room, “there has to be a way—”

“If that transmission was sent from somewhere, we can follow the signal back. I can go find him,” Carol said firmly, lighting up her fists and nodding her head. “If he said day thirteen, then the message is five days old. Universally speaking, if it only took five days to cross the distance, it cant be that far away. I can get to him.”

Steve looked up, watched everyone nod and then straighten up, the prospect of a new mission close on the horizon. His heart was going a mile a minute under his ribcage, and he wondered whether or not this was all a dream. He’d spent weeks now just waiting for Tony to come home, to show himself, and now that it was all actually here, he felt like it couldn’t be true.

But it was. It was fucking true, because he was there. In that projection. _Alive_.

“Alright,” Rhodey clapped his hands, game-face on, “come on team—let’s go get my best friend back home.”

 

-

 

The next few days were hell.

Steve couldn’t focus. Couldn’t work, or eat, or sleep.

Carol had left, and she was going to find Tony. They just had to hope that it wasn’t too late, and he was still… still alive.

 _“Rogers,”_ Rocket chastised him when he bumped into the table for the second time, “if you’re gonna be like this until we get Stark back from space then I’m gonna have to ask that you just stay in your room and not touch anything or interact with anyone. It’s giving me a migraine just _watching_ you, Jesus Christ.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, putting back the little gizmo that he’d knocked off the side, and then looked at it in confusion when he discovered it wasn’t actually a gizmo, but a weird troll-doll thing. He made a face. “What the hell is this?”

Rocket eyed it, something falling in his face as he snatched it out of Steve’s hands. For a moment, Steve thought that Rocket was going to tell him to fuck off, but then instead the raccoon just sighed and threw it around in his palms a few times. “Quill loved these fucking things,” he said quietly, “had a bunch of ‘em. One time, after me and the rest of the Guardians nearly goddamn killed ourselves by sharing the force of the power stone, Quill gave one of these little guys to Yondu and played it off to be a fucking infinity stone. It was so dumb. Quill was… _so_ fucking dumb.” Rocket shook his head, looking stubbornly down at his desk as he threw the ugly little doll back onto the table. Steve didn’t really understand most of what Rocket had just said, but he could hear the pain in the creature’s voice, and tried to think of something that’d take his mind off it.

“Sharing the power stone?” He tried, curious despite himself, “what do you mean by that?”

Rocket grunted. “I dunno, we heard about a bunch of warlocks who managed to use the stone without exploding into a thousand little pieces by sharing out the power between them, and then we tried it. Amazingly, it worked. God knows why. Maybe we were just too stubborn to die.”

Steve nodded in understanding, looking back at the toy now sat on Rocket’s table. It was ugly, and the raccoon clearly hated it. But he kept it close.

Rocket, unlike the rest of them, had lost everyone in his family. The whole damn lot of them.

Steve didn’t know how to carry on the conversation after that, so he quietly left, took up position back on the rooftop. That was where he stayed most days, now. Just waiting for Carol to bring Tony back home. Tony would know what to do about all this. Tony would fix it.

He just had to come back home.

 

-

 

Day 21, and Steve finally decided to shave. It was boredom, mostly. Plus, the beard itched, and the shaggy hair had been okay when he was hiding and trying to cover his face as much as possible, but now it was just annoying. He’d not gotten around to it earlier because… well. Safe to say there had been some slightly more pressing matters on his mind.

But just sitting in Tony’s workshop and waiting was slowly driving him insane. He had to do _something_ , anything at all that made him feel like he was being productive. Turned out shaving was the first thing he thought of. Perhaps not his greatest plan ever, but it was better than just sitting and moping.

He pulled out the shaving kit from the bathroom and got to work, carefully scraping off the beard he’d kept for the past few years. It felt strange to have a bare face now, but he preferred it that way. Looked and felt a little more like himself. He raised an eyebrow at his reflection and then sighed. It was a long time since he’d given himself a proper look in the mirror. He could see the tiredness on his own face, deep and heavy. It sat under his eyes, pooled around his brow. He looked old.

The reflection shuddered, just a little, and he frowned and attempted to steady it, thinking that Thor had just gotten overexcited again. But the shuddering got more extreme, and Steve realised the whole room was beginning to shake. His next thought was that it might be an Earthquake—but then something else popped into his head, and his eyes widened, heart suddenly going completely still in his chest as a billion different emotions roar up to meet him.

Something was coming.

Scrambling out of the bathroom, he went to grab a sweater and yanked it on, rushing outside with the rest of the team, all of them feeling the vibrations become stronger and stronger under their feet. As soon as he was out the door he was craning he neck, looking upward, _come on come on come on, please—_

There. North corner of the night sky, getting steadily closer, a white-bright light that told them of Carol’s arrival. And on her shoulders, a ship. Dark, no lights, all of them gone out. She was bringing it closer, intending to land it on the grass out in front of them. Steve choked, rushing forward, hearing the rest of the group follow behind him. They should’ve brought a fucking med-kit, a stretcher, _something_ , God, what’d they been thinking—

Carol touched down, and Steve stopped thinking entirely. Stopped considering anything other than the fact that Tony was in there, on that ship, Oh God, please, _please_ say he was alive.

“He’s alive,” Carol shouted, and Steve was so grateful for her that he would’ve gotten down on his knees and kissed her feet, “but he needs help, and fast.”

Steve nodded, watching the ship of the door open with a hiss. He was still running, leaving the rest of the team behind in the dirt as he used every ounce of speed he had to get to Tony. The man was stumbling out of the ship, accompanied by a woman made of metal and blue skin, and Steve barely even acknowledged it. Tony’s name fell from his lips, loud enough that Tony heard it and looked up.

He stopped walking, a billion things in his eyes as they locked onto each other across the grass. Tony tried to take the next step down, but his knees gave out and he stumbled, slipped forward. But it was okay. Steve caught him by the elbow, gentle as he could make it, keeping Tony off the ground and holding him steady. All the air in the world wasn’t enough for his lungs. Tony was _there_. He was touching Steve, after all this time, after all those battles, after Steve had questioned whether or not they’d ever be able to bring Tony back home.

“I lost the kid,” Tony wheezed, looking at him and holding on tight to Steve’s elbow. Tony wasn’t just thin… Tony was emaciated, eyes sunken, cheekbones horribly visible. “Steve, I lost him, I—I lost—”

“I know,” Steve told him, helping him down off the ramp and trying not to let himself cry. Tony would be okay. He was in bad shape, but he’d get better. “We couldn’t stop him. We tried, but we couldn’t… it was too much.”

Tony just looked at him, shaking his head. _“We_ didn’t try,” he whispered, and there was something bitter in his tone, something that reminded Steve of  
‘ _how are we intending on beating that?’_  
‘together’  
‘we’ll lose’  
_‘then we’ll do that together too’._

He looked away and swallowed down the nausea, and instead just gently helped Tony back toward the compound. Tony was home. That was all that mattered.

 

-

 

Things were hard, after that.

Tony was angry. Rightfully so. Steve remembered back in 2015, the first time Tony had told them all that this would happen. The previous mission had made him erratic, scared, frightened enough that he’d made some stupid calls. Steve had been so angry that Tony hadn’t just talked to him about it first, and Tony had desperately tried to tell him that he was doing it for them, for the greater good. Steve had just thought Tony was afraid, and acting irrationally because of it. He hadn’t listened.

And now Tony’s fears had all come true, and Tony could hardly even look him in the eye.

He was sick and frail, but that didn’t stop him from tearing Steve a new one in front of everyone, ripping off the arc reactor and smacking it down into Steve’s hand bitterly as he told Steve exactly what he thought. Steve didn’t say a word, and wondered if he’d ever stop letting Tony down. All he could do, once more, was catch Tony’s arms before he could collapse and then carry him over to the medbay to get some more rest. That was where he stayed vigil, right outside Tony’s door, so the man wouldn’t have to wake up and see him, and maybe a little bit so that Steve didn’t have to see him either. There was something so utterly soul destroying about seeing Tony like that; so weak and fragile, all that spark and life that’d been in him, crushed by the weight of his loss and his sickness. It hurt.

Everything hurt, these days.

On the third day of sitting outside Tony’s room and checking with the Doctors that he was improving, he heard a sharp voice from the window. “I can see you, you know, idiot.”

Steve jumped and looked up, spotting Tony peering at him from the cracked-open blinds. He hadn’t gotten any less thin, but his complexion seemed slightly healthier. That was good. “Uh,” he stammered, trying to think of something to respond with, “I know you know. I was just—”

“Being creepy?” Tony finished, raising an eyebrow. Steve’s cheeks burned, and he sat up and got ready to leave, but then Tony just sighed and rolled his eyes. “God, just come inside, Steve. You don’t need to sit on guard.”

Steve eyed him. “Are you… serious?”

“Of course I’m fucking serious.” Tony clicked his teeth and then looked sullen for a moment before he finally looked Steve in the eye. “The whole world’s fallen apart. We’ve lost everything. I don’t… God, I just want—just come in. I’m tired of being angry. That’s so pre-apocalypse.”

Steve stared at him through the glass window and thought of all the time they’d missed out on. It’d been two years. Two years without Tony by his side, but here he was now, offering. Even if it wasn’t going to go back to normal. Even if they couldn’t ever get that part back. Steve would take this. So he nodded and stepped through the door.

 

They talked for a long time. About everything. About Siberia, the Accords. About Steve not telling him of his parents’ true cause of death. Tony got angry, and cried, and Steve tried to find a way to encapsulate everything he wanted to say but he couldn’t do it, so he cried too.

It was a mess. But it was their own, and after two years of nothing except occasional dark motel rooms and blowjobs, it was more than Steve could ever have hoped for.

“I hate what you did,” Tony told him quietly, looking straight at him with a clenched jaw, glasses perched precariously on the edge of his nose. “I hate that you didn’t tell me, and let me get hurt like that. I hate that you left me to clean up all your shit when you left me behind.”

“Tony, I—”

“Shut up.” Tony pursed his lips and then huffed, grabbing Steve’s hand from where it was resting on the bed. He squeezed softly, while Steve just stared at him in confusion. “I also kind of understand. When I was on that ship, I did a lot of thinking. About everything we never told each other. About how horrible it must have been to know your best friend killed your boyfriend’s parents. You were caught between a rock and a hard place, Steve, and I—I was _so_ angry at you, for such a long time.”

He paused and swallowed down the lump in his throat, but he didn’t let go of Steve’s hands. “But I was dying up there, and all I could think about was you. About how I wish I’d just put aside my pride and talked to you, about how much still loved you. I spent two years of my life too angry and stubborn to back down and talk to you first, but up there, I realised how fucking stupid it was. I made myself unhappy just so I could act like I was better off without you.” His eyes were filled with regret as he looked down and whispered, feather-soft, “I wasn’t. Not at all.”

Steve’s heart was in his throat and he could feel himself shaking, a hotness around his eyelashes that always seemed so close to the surface these days, but he held onto Tony’s hand and didn’t let go, anchored himself to what was here, now, right in front of him.

He’d made a hell of a lot of mistakes in his life. Both of them had. But with half the universe gone and a world steeped in despair, all either of them could do now was try find happiness. Somewhere. Anywhere they fucking could.

He lifted their joined hands and gently, so gently, pressed the lightest of kisses against Tony’s knuckles. Tony stilled, mouth shutting as he looked at where his skin met Steve’s lips. Then his chest shuddered and his face crumpled, and he shook his head softly as he looked back into Steve’s eyes. “I missed you so much, you fucking prick, I missed you so so much—”

“God, sweetheart, I missed you too,” Steve breathed with a wet smile, reaching out to brush the tears off Tony’s cheeks. He hovered close, keeping Tony’s hands near to his chest as he leaned down and placed another kiss over Tony’s forehead, their eyelashes brushing as he pulled away. “We’re gonna… we’ll get through this. We will. I have to go for a few days, okay, we’re gonna… we’re gonna track down Thanos, Bruce probably told you, right?”

“Yeah,” Tony nodded from the bed and swallowed, “yeah, I know. But. But come back, okay? Please? Promise you’re gonna come back. He’s not someone you can afford to underestimate, and I can’t—"

“You won’t,” Steve promised, “I’ll come straight back. Tony, if we can get the stones… if we can grab that gauntlet, then there could be a chance that we can bring everyone back. There could be hope.”

Tony smiled, and he squeezed Steve’s fingers once more before letting go. “Then what the hell are you waiting for, Rogers? Go save the universe. You can kiss me later.”

Steve smiled, something falling back into place within him at the words, like coming back home after a long mission. He stood straight and took a step back, before pausing and swooping down again, placing a delicate kiss against Tony’s mouth, nervous and quick and pulling away before he could second-guess himself. “Just for Good luck,” he explained, and then hightailed it out of the room, feeling something strangely close to happiness settle in his gut.

Now all he needed to do was beat Thanos, take the gauntlet, bring back the rest of the universe, and everything would be fine.

 

 

\--

 

 

They were too late.

Thanos had won.

They went back home empty handed.

 

 

\--

 

 

“I went on a date yesterday,” John blurted, fiddling with his glasses and then looking around the room. Steve nodded encouragingly at him, and John seemed to take strength from that, because he pushed forward. “First one, after my husband… it was nice. He was called Riley and it was his first date too. He cried while we were served our salad.”

The little church where Steve had set up these meetings made John’s voice echo out, and Steve had the fleeting thought of putting carpet down, adding more furniture, just putting _something_ that would stop the room from feeling so cavernous and empty. That was absolutely not what they should be thinking at these meetings. Sam would have kicked his ass and talked to him about positive reinforcements.

Sam would have been good at this.

John talked for a few more seconds, eventually ending with the fact that they were going on a second date next week, and Steve smiled at him. That was great. He was now the second one in the group who’d made a move like that, and Steve was proud of the guy. He talked for a little bit about coping methods, told them all that this was the point in the exercise: moving on. “Seventy years ago, I thought I’d found the love of my life,” he said gently, turning to look at all of them, “then I woke up here. Thought it was all over. That I’d lost my one shot. But then I met Tony, and at first, it was hard. It was difficult to move on ‘cause I felt like I was betraying her. But I know that she would have wanted me to be happy. And if your partners loved you, then you know that’s what they would have wanted too.” He paused, before smiling softly and looking down at his lap. “I’m happy now. I never thought I could be. And it took a lot of time. But I found love again, found reason, and there is not a damn thing in the universe that I would trade that for now. And I believe that all of you will too.”

They wound up the session after that, everyone having said their fill. The evening was dark and damp as Steve made his way back to the car, the parking lot still filled with abandoned cars, years old. There was always going to be a different area to clean up. The echoes of human life that remained, even after death.

Steve looked away and tried to ignore the harsh voice that told him, _you could’ve stopped this._

He’d tried. He’d never stop trying to help. But that was all he could do now.

The journey home was fairly short, and by the end of it he was aching to step through the threshold and back into happiness. Going into the city for whatever reason these days was just… terrible. It was the only way to describe it. It was empty and dark, filled with the remains of a disaster that the world just didn’t have the manpower to clean up. Sometimes people recognised him, too. Sometimes they screamed, threw things, told him to go to hell. ‘We believed in you’, they’d hiss, and Steve couldn’t do anything except keep his head down and try to ignore it.

So yeah. Steve hated going into the city.

He pulled up into the drive and opened up the front door wearily, the smell of cooking and herbs filling his nose as soon as he stepped over the threshold. Voices drifted through the air too, right from around the corner where the kitchen was, and he heard Tony’s voice as he said “hold up, honey-plum, I think we’ve got company.”

There was a small pause, and then a giggle and a sudden pattering of feet. Steve’s mouth turned up into a smile and he dropped his bag, watching the little whirlwind appear around the corner and rush up to meet him. “Hey Daddy!”

She leaped into his arms freely, and with a small laugh he caught her easily, hoisting her up onto his hip. “Hey squirt,” he replied, giving her a quick kiss on the forehead as he stepped further through the corridor, “is your father trying to make dinner again?”

“Don’t slander me in front of our daughter, Steve, I can make dinner perfectly fine thank you!” Tony’s voice shouted from the kitchen, and a second later his head popped around the corner, looking a little bit frazzled. His glasses were all steamed up. “Maria, get away from that liar immediately and come fulfil your duties as culinary sidekick.”

Steve just looked at his daughter and pulled a face, which was quickly replicated by her. “It smells super funny,” she whispered, and Steve held back a laugh as he nodded and glanced over at a betrayed Tony.

“I’ll bet it does,” he murmured, “But we gotta humour him, okay, or he’ll start getting sulky.”

“Too late, I’m already sulking,” Tony made a face and then ducked back into the kitchen with a huff, Steve following along and carrying Maria in his arms. She was getting bigger every day—almost five, now, and Steve still found that hard to believe, some days.

Five years with a family of his own. Five years since they’d adopted that little girl, nothing but a baby, and decided that this time they were going to do everything right. Time had passed, and they’d stuck to that promise every day. Named her Maria, after Tony’s mother, and loved her with every little bit of themselves that they had left to spare. Turned out that meant there was quite a lot of love to go around.

They were happy. Steve could hardly fathom it, some days, but he really, truly was.

“Daddy,” Maria poked him in the shoulder and he looked down at her, “does this mean that we get to eat takeout again?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “We’ll evaluate the situation when we get into the kitchen and see what it is, alright?”

“It’s bad. We need to get pizza or I’m gonna starve.” She made a sad face and then pressed her hands together in prayer, and Steve snorted. She was her father’s daughter alright, that was for damn sure.

“I’m a trained soldier, Missus, emotional blackmail won’t work on me.” He set her down on her seat at the kitchen table when they reached it and then wandered over to the stove where Tony was frantically stirring at the pot in front of him. He peered over Tony’s shoulder to observe it, giving his husband a delicate kiss in greeting as he did so. When he saw the contents of the pot, however, he quickly turned back to his daughter. “Okay, you win. Pizza looks like the only option.”

He felt the back of a spoon thwack his shoulder in response, and turned back to Tony while Maria just giggled and cheered. The man was rolling his eyes. “I hate when you two team up on me,” he said, “for the record, I’d like to say that it was all going fine until I was abandoned by Stark junior when I needed her most!” He pointed the spoon accusingly at her. “You went off to hug daddy and left me on my own to try and find the salt. So really, this is all on you.”

Maria looked at Steve and inconspicuously shook her head. Tony just tutted and said something else about betrayal, but ultimately admitted his defeat as he handed Steve his mobile and then pointed to the drawer where the takeout menus were kept. “Maria Stark, you are lucky you are my daughter and I love you, otherwise this lack of faith in my cooking skills would have deeply wounded me.” He took the ruined pot of…. Whatever it was, off the stove and then slipped into the seat next to his daughter, talking to her in a quiet voice as Steve ordered their usual from the nearest Pizza delivery. For the billionth time, Steve watched the two of them and thought about how amazing Tony was with her. Before doing this, before making the decision, Tony had been torn. There were so many kids without homes or families now, and they’d both wanted to have a child—but his husband had been so nervous, convinced that he was going to do everything wrong.

“I don’t know how to be a good dad,” he’d said, fear and bitterness in his voice as they’d looked at the adoption agencies, “I never… everyone always says I’m just like my old man, but if that’s true, I couldn’t— _wouldn’t_ —do that to any kid. I wouldn’t put them in my care.”

And Steve had looked at him, taken his hand and pulled Tony’s body into his side. “Just by saying that alone, I know you would never ever be close to what your father was,” he’d responded with, the words coming confidently and with ease, because it really just wasn’t a question. Tony loved with everything he had, and if given the responsibility of a child, there would be no way in hell he’d ever let the kid down. Not even the slightest fucking chance.

Of course, Steve had been right. Looking at them while Tony made their little girl giggle uncontrollably at something or another, Steve couldn’t think of a single damn thing that he could improve upon.

Twenty minutes later and dinner was served for real this time, Tony grumbling to himself as he leaned into Steve’s side on the couch and  bounced Maria up and down on his lap, all of them watching another round of My Little Pony, which Maria seemed to have taken a shine to for whatever reason. Steve had tried to introduce to her the cartoons he’d seen when he was a kid, once, but she’d regarded them with such a look of disdain that Tony had burst out into hysterical laughter and Steve had admitted that it was probably a tad dated for her, being the daughter of one of the most technologically advanced minds on the planet and all.

It was toward the end of their meal that Steve got the call. Fishing it out of his pocket, he thumbed answer and smiled automatically. “Hey, Tasha,” he said, “how’s it b—”

“Ant-Man’s alive,” she said, ever-blunt and to the point, and Steve stilled, his eyes widening at the statement, “he’s alive, and he says time-travel is real, and we need you and Tony at the compound right now.”

Tony was busy braiding Maria’s hair gently, a skill he’d picked up as soon as they’d taken her home, and didn’t hear the words come out through Steve’s phone. He felt the way Steve tensed up underneath him though, and turned in confusion, immediately analysing Steve’s face and sitting up straighter. “Maria,” he said easily, “go get your jimmy-jams on. It’s getting late.”

She sighed, but hopped off the sofa and then toddled up the stairs all the same, Tony watching her until her feet had disappeared before turning back to Steve. “What’s happened.”

“Nat,” he began, holding up a finger to Tony in a gesture for him to wait, “what do you mean, ‘Ant-man’s back’? He… that’s not possible—”

“He got caught in the quantum—look, can you put Tony on the phone? He might understand this better,” she said hurriedly, and Tony’s brow creased as Steve handed over the phone, but he slipped it up to his ear all the same and then listened in while Natasha talked. He asked questions occasionally, but mostly absorbed the information given to him, until eventually just shutting his eyes and running a hand over his face.

“I need to talk to Steve about this,” he said eventually, voice low, “I’ll get back to you in a bit, okay? Yes, I’m aware. No, Natasha, Jesus Fuck, I’m not saying… look, I’m not having this conversation with you right now. Just remember that it’s not only my fucking life on the line any more. I’ll call you later.” He ripped the phone away from his ear and then pressed end-call, tossing the phone onto the coffee table. Steve, who’d been listening in to the conversation they’d been having and managing to piece together most of what was going on, simply took in a deep breath.

“We could time travel,” he said in the end, voice soft, “Tony, do you know what that… if what Natasha’s saying is right, we could—”

“But we _can’t,”_ Tony snapped, “Steve… Steve, it’s fucking over. It’s done. Thanos, he won. And we—Steve, we got lucky, honey, we both made it out alive, managed to find something in this mess, we can’t risk that. We can’t risk throwing all this away on a whim.”

“It doesn’t sound like a whim to me,” Steve said gently, “it sounds like Scott just proved you could do it and survive.”

Tony’s jaw clenched, realising that Steve was actually considering this. “One in a million chance,” he said, “absolutely no scientific evidence that any of us could replicate that. Steve, you cannot be serious here. No. No, we’re not doing it.” He stood up from the sofa abruptly, Steve following him swiftly.

“Tony,” he began, “we can’t just _leave_ _this_. If there’s a chance—if we could bring back everyone. Sam and Bucky and T’challa, Peter—”

 _“Don’t!”_ Tony raised his voice then, the word cracking at the end as he pointed a finger accusingly at Steve, “don’t fucking say that. You can’t… use that, not now. We have priorities, Steve. We have a little baby girl, if you had fucking forgotten—”

“Forgotten? Tony, I want to do this for her!” He waved hand through the air incredulously, “I want to do this so that she doesn’t have to grow up in a broken world! So that she might have a chance at knowing her family, at going to school without passing by the memorials! I want her to know a world that isn’t built on death and despair, Tony, and there is an entire universe depending on us to—”

 _“She is my entire universe,”_ Tony hissed through his teeth, “I… we lost, Steve. Fucking accept it. He won, and he beat us, and we have to fucking move on. Isn’t that what you tell everyone at your support group? Isn’t that what we all tell the world, every damned day?”

Steve just looked at him; looked at his husband, with his life-bright eyes and vibrating anger, and knew that it was all just a front. Tony’s heart was on his sleeve, even if he didn’t know it.

“Are you saying you could sleep at night, knowing that you could help turn this around?” He asked, simple and quiet. “Because I don’t think you could, Tony. I don’t think you could.”

Tony glared at him, the theme-song of My Little Pony starting up again in the background. Tony was breathing heavily, mouth open like he was going to say something. But it wouldn’t come, and so he settled for looking away and stepping back. “I’m gonna go put Maria to bed,” he said blankly, clearly finished with this conversation as he turned away, “don’t wait up for me.”

Steve watched him go, something heavy settling in his gut in a way that it hadn’t in so long now. It was his fight response waking up, his battle mode coming back to him. He wished it wouldn’t. Wished that he could just stay here and pretend he’d never heard Natasha’s words. But that wasn’t a decision he’d be able to make in good conscience—not when he knew that there could be a solution out there. Even if it was just the tiniest of chances…

Well. Like Natasha had said years ago: they owed it to everyone who wasn’t in the room to try.

Sensing that Tony wasn’t going to be up for talking any time soon, he quietly cleaned up and then made his way over to the gym to vent out some of his frustrations. There he stayed for about an hour, punching away at the bag and running through combinations that had been drilled into him years ago, just to feel something familiar, sense the pull of muscle under his skin.

A time machine, Scott had said. A real life, genuine time machine. Not perfect, of course, and if they were going to do anything with it, he was pretty sure Tony would be vital to that, but still… time travel. The geek inside him couldn’t quite believe that. He’d spent so much time wondering about whether it was possible, about whether there was a way for him to go back to the forties where he’d thought he’d belonged… but now it was in front of him, Steve didn’t even entertain the thought. There was nothing left for him back there now. But here, he had everything.

He could see why Tony was apprehensive. This… God, this was a life Steve couldn’t bear to lose.

When he’d managed to take out all his pent-up frustrations on the bag in front of him, he quickly took a shower and then slipped back downstairs, going over to the couch and picking up his sketchbook. He’d draw for a little while, then try find Tony again, have another discussion – this one hopefully a little calmer.

However, it turned out he didn’t need to. Tony found him. “You know, Maria says she loves me three-thousand,” he started with as he came into the room, and Steve looked up enquiringly while Tony just pointed his finger at him. “Pretty sure that means she loves me most, seeing as you’re somewhere around the 1 to 2 thousand mark.”

Steve smiled, watching as Tony shuffled on his feet for a few moments. He seemed… nervous. A little erratic, just like he got when he was on the verge of a huge discovery.

Turned out Steve was absolutely right in that analysis. “I figured it out,” Tony blurted after a second of silence. “Time travel. I figured out how to… do it. Safely. And well.”

How many times had Tony come to him with an outrageous statement like that? God, too many to count. Tony Stark was just the man who changed the entire world in a single evening, and Steve loved him so much he physically felt as if one day it’d all explode out through his chest. “That was fast,” he said, gently placing his pencil back on the armrest, “do you think you’re gonna do anything with it now?”

Tony stilled. He seemed torn, and Steve instinctively raised a hand, letting Tony take it and fall into Steve’s lap limply, tucking himself up under Steve’s shoulder and sighing. “I don’t know,” he whispered, “I don’t… I could put a pin in it, right now. I could just let it go. This doesn’t have to be my fight, _our_ fight, any more.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Steve said, knowing that Tony was currently talking more to himself than Steve, “but how well do you think you’d sleep, knowing that pin was digging into you every time you turned?”

Again, Tony was quiet, save for his antsy shuffling. Steve watched him worry at his bottom lip and twist his wedding ring around and around his finger, deep in thought. “What do we tell Maria?” He said eventually, “how are we supposed to just… ‘hey sugarplum, Daddy and Pops are going on a trip for a little while, and we might not—we might not make it back, but—”

“We _will,”_ Steve said determinedly, holding Tony a little tighter, “we will make it back, Tony. Because we have a beautiful daughter to make it back for. I’d fight Thanos any day of the week to protect that, and I’d win.”

Tony sucked in a little burst of air like he was going to try and argue, but it didn’t come. He palmed a hand over his tired eyes instead, and curled tighter against Steve’s side. “I want Maria to know Peter,” he whispered, small and quiet, “I want her to know her Auntie Pepper-Pott. And I don’t want her to live a world where she has to pass the memorial stones every day either.”

Steve shut his eyes, tipping his head forward into Tony’s. This was… big. Bigger than any other chance they’d had before. Tony had worked it out now, and all they had to do was act on it. Try. Do better than last time, do something that might actually bring everyone back.

And Steve knew, if there was one thing that Tony Stark had never in his life been able to do, it was stop trying to help people.

“Let’s go save the universe,” Tony said in the end, nodding his head once, “before Scott accidentally turns himself into a baby.”

 

\--

 

When Steve looked into the eyes of his own self from 12 years ago, he had a moment of astounding clarity, in which his entire life played out in front of him like a video tape.

All this time, and it’d never been Loki who’d said those words to him. Never been Loki who’d catalysed Steve’s friendship with Tony Stark all those years ago, bringing them closer together in a way that would change his life forever.

It’d always been him.

He gaped in total surprise, all of it falling into place perfectly. He’d always wondered why Loki had chosen to say that, of all things. How he’d known. The science behind all this made no sense to Steve, and he wondered if, in a decade or so’s time, this Steve Rogers in front of him would also find love in the modern world, or if them coming back here right now would change something irrevocably for this man. Steve wondered what would have happened to himself, had he not been in this situation and heard the phrase ‘Bucky’s alive’ fall out of his own mouth. Maybe he never would have made that first step with Tony. Maybe they’d never have fallen in love.

Somehow, though, Steve found that unlikely. He wasn’t sure there was a universe around where he could ever not love Tony Stark.

“I’m not Loki,” he said in response to his younger version’s declaration, but as he knew, the words fell onto deaf ears. Within three seconds they were fighting, and Steve had to hand it to his younger self, the guy sure was spritely. He got a good few hits in, and Steve found himself pinned into a chokehold by the other version, scrabbling at the floor as he tried to get out of the grip.

He realised this was when he said it, right here, right now. The words that altered Steve’s course in history forever.

“Bucky’s alive,” he wheezed, and then for good measure, “and he killed Tony’s parents.”

The effect was immediate. His younger self paused, freezing up in shock, and Steve took the opportunity, headbutting him quickly and sharply and knocking him clean out. Other Steve lay sprawled out on the floor, out cold to the world, and Steve looked at him. He wondered what those extra five words were going to do. It was a dangerous game to play, but maybe… maybe it would work out. Perhaps those five words could save the universe.

Steve couldn’t stop to think about it too hard. Instead, he shot one last appreciative glance at his own ass (which was absolutely _fine_ in that suit, thank you very much Tony) and then vaulted the railings, continuing the mission that they’d been sent out to complete.

 

\--

 

He faced off, one man against Thanos’ entire army as it marched toward him and his broken shield, and all he could think about was Maria.

They’d tried. Him and Tony, they’d tried for her. But Steve had broken his promises, _again_ , as he realised that he wasn’t going to be coming home. None of them were. Thanos was going to destroy the entire universe, and take his little girl with it. There was nothing that Steve could do to stop it.

 _‘I’m sorry’_ he thought, feeling a tear slip down his cheek as he hefted his shield for the last time, _‘I’m so so sorry’._

 

And then there was a noise.

Small, at first, but then it got louder. And louder. Some sort of crackling, like sparks on a firework, and—

 

“ _On your left,”_ Sam yelled, and Steve could only look up and stare in disbelief as his best friend swooped low and around the ruins of the compound, yelling a war-cry as he lifted his weapon. He didn’t even believe his own eyes, at first, but then a second later, the crackling noise was paired with a light, and Steve realised that they were portals—portals everywhere, opening behind him, flooding the ruins of the compound with friends, warriors, fighters. Steve gaped at the sight of Wanda, Bucky, T’challa—he saw a silver Iron Suit land with a thud and gaped as Pepper opened up the faceplate and nodded at him. By the hundreds they came, Wakandans and Asgardians, sorcerers and Avengers, until Steve was no longer alone.

Steve was the leader of an entire army.

By his side, Thor came to stand with him, nodding at him once, and suddenly Steve knew what to do. There was a bubbling inside him, igniting and growing like a flame, like an inferno.

It was hope.

“Avengers,” he yelled, looking at Thanos from across the battlefield and showing his teeth in a smug grin of triumph. _“Assemble.”_

 

And assemble they did.

 

With a battle cry that sounded like a hurricane blowing through, they charged at Thanos and his army, human and alien and everything in between, hurtling through the rubble and dust and ruins of the compound and heading to war with the beings intent on destroying their universe. He heard Thor’s roar and resounding thunder clap, and then the charging up of repulsors as Tony flew up ahead. Steve smiled, wild and triumphant, and let the jagged edge of his shield slice through the first thing that stood in his way.

They could do this. They could destroy Thanos, once and for all, together. Like they always should have been.

He punched and kicked and fought for his life, for everyone’s life, working with Mjolnir which Thor had lent him and using that instead of his broken shield. The rage of the past five years consumed his soul, transforming itself into wild and merciless energy. A snap of the neck, and that was for taking Peter away from Tony. A lightning bolt that friend a dozen bodies, and that was for Sam and for Bucky, lost to Steve again, just when he thought he’d gotten him back. He didn’t have time to reunite with any of the people he’d lost, but he saw Peter swinging on by and webbing up a dozen different enemies, and he grabbed his attention.

“Tony’s that way,” he said, pointing off Northward where Iron Man was frazzling Ebony Maw with untamed power, backed by Thor’s lightning and shielded by Pepper’s Rescue Armour.

Peter nodded, and then looked at him. “What the Goddamn hell is going on?” He asked, and Steve remembered that to this kid—hell, to all of them, the past five years just hadn’t happened.

He grinned and then waved it off. “I’ll explain it you later, Queens,” he said, “go see Tony.”

Peter grinned right back at him, and a second later he was off, stumbling through the battlefield with a happy cry of ‘Mister Stark!’

“Bit of a funny time to be stood there smilin’, Cap,” Rocket told him as he grabbed an abandoned weapon off the ground and then fired it over Steve’s shoulder, taking down an oncoming rival, “get your ass into gear and help us save the universe!”

Steve dived to the left, avoiding a shot and then stabbing the razor-corner of his shield into the body that had been charging toward the both of them. “Maybe try dancing off with him,” he quipped through a feral grin, “you said that worked last time.”

Rocket laughed, loud and raucous, and then leaped off the top of the mound of rubble to join back into the fray. Not long after, Steve followed.

They fought to get the gauntlet back to where it needed to go—the van right at the other side of the battlefield, of course, because their lives could never just be easy for once. Steve watched various heroes carry the Iron Gauntlet further forward, yelling at Peter to grab it as he saw it fly overhead. Everything was happening all at once, and then when fire started raining down on the Earth, Steve lost sight of the gauntlet entirely amongst the dust and smoke. He scrabbled under a protective barrier made by one of the sorcerers and spared a glance upward to observe the threat. In that same moment, that light—that glorious, amazing fucking photon-based light that had saved Tony’s life all those years ago—arced through the sky like an angel, and Steve felt himself whoop in vindication as Captain Marvel joined the fray, pounding through the entire ship like it was made of cotton candy.

After that, Steve felt like there was no force in the universe that could stop them now. This was a galaxy’s worth of rage, of pain and loss and hurt, coming together to fight. And they didn’t intend to go home as the losers.

But then, neither did Thanos.

He saw Captain Marvel rushing toward the van as fast as she could and prayed she’d make it, certain that nothing on heaven or earth could stop her travel. And he was right; no one could catch her. But Thanos was smart, and not ready to give up. With a howl of rage and fury, the Titan hurled his massive weapon across the sky, and Steve could only watch on helplessly from afar as the van exploded into a thousand fragments; the portal into the quantum realm completely annihilated.

The stones had nowhere to go now. And if Thanos got to them, then it was the end of life itself.

Steve snarled and started up on a run, but was sidetracked by another fight, and then another, and then another. He couldn’t get close enough to help, and could only watch with a painful cry of Tony’s name as his husband was punched into the dirt and left there, lying still in his attempts to get Thanos away from the stones. Luckily, however, Thor arrived on the scene a second later and with a roar of mighty thunder, slamming into Thanos at a hundred miles an hour and throwing him off target. The Titan stumbled precious feet away from the gauntlet, and that was all they needed. Thor struck blow after blow while Steve ran as fast as he could, lifting his own hand and summoning up Mjolnir. He resisted his instincts to go to Tony, pushing them back as far as they could physically go in order to finish the fight, save the universe.

Thanos and Thor’s arms both locked, caught in a wrestle between one another, and without question Steve leaped into the fray, clambering onto the alien’s back and pressing Thor’s hammer as tightly into his throat as it would go.

But it wasn’t enough. Thanos was too strong. With a deep growl, the Titan threw Steve off his back, sending him hurtling into unforgiving rock and then finishing it with a punch to the face. Steve’s vision swam and the world blackened for a few moments as he faded out of consciousness.

 _Get up,_ the voice in his head screamed at him, _get up,_ _For Maria. For Tony. For the universe. Get up and stop him before it’s too late._

He gasped in pain and tried, tried so hard. But his head was spinning too hard for him to even know which way was up, and all he could see from where he was looking was the dusty view of a red and gold armour, lying in the same spot twenty feet away from him. He wondered whether Tony was looking back at him, thinking the same things that he was.

He tried to make his mouth move into an ‘I love you’, but he wasn’t even sure whether he did that right. Somewhere in his periphery, he saw Thanos lean down, pick up the gauntlet, and then everything went dark.

 

He floated, for a few happy seconds, in a place where nothing was burning. Where his world was a calm gentle ocean, and he was sat next to Tony, Maria on his lap. He smiled at both of them, and tried to remember what it was that he was missing.

Tony’s smile warmed him. His hair was dusted with grays, and the glasses sat wonky on his nose like always. ‘You can’t stay here forever,’ he muttered with a fond roll of his eyes, tucking one of Maria’s little strands of hair out of her face.

Steve frowned when he heard a roaring noise. It seemed out of place here. ‘Why not?’ He asked.

Tony just sighed, and looked at him with a serious face. ‘Because you saw me moving,’ he murmured, stroking Steve’s face, ‘before you lost consciousness, you saw me move. And you know if I can move, I can fight. So you really, really have to stop me from doing something stupid and reckless and heroic before it’s too late to go back on, don’t you?’

 Steve’s eyes widened, and he realised that Tony was right. He had to get up. There was still some fight in him, and he had to wake up. Now.

‘I love you’ he said, and then with a heave of his chest and a groan of pain, the world blacked once more and returned, back to darkness and rubble and hurt and no, God, Tony was grappling with Thanos for the gauntlet, face twisted and determined as he attempted to wrestle it from the Titan’s hand.

Steve felt the whole world slow.

There were moments, some survivors Steve had talked to said—moments before things happened, when they felt like they just knew, deep in their bones, that something was going to change their entire world in those next few seconds. A woman in her forties; Katheryn, Steve think she was called—told him that before her son was turned to dust, she’d looked into her little boy’s’ eyes and just known, deep in her soul, that these were their last few moments together, and so she’d told him she’d loved him as quick as she could, and sure enough, a moment later he’d been gone.

Maybe it was just wired into Human DNA to know when your world was going to change forever.

Steve felt that, in his gut. Under his ribs. Ripping him apart.

 

He knew what Tony was going to do before he even did it, because it had been 12 years, and Steve had learned more and more about him through each one of them.

 

Scrambling up to his feet, he lurched forward hurtling rabidly on deadened legs over to where Tony had just been thrown by Thanos, now holding the gauntlet in his hand with triumph. Tony clocked him and his eyes widened, sad and scared and horrified. He hadn’t wanted Steve to see.

“Together,” Steve screamed, rushing forward as Thanos turned his head to face them, uncaring of them now that he had all those stones in his fist. He thought of Rocket’s words from years ago, as he’d talked about sharing the stone’s power and managing to escape alive. The idea cleared his mind of the fog and gave him a target.  
Steve had to do this with Tony. Because that was what they did. They saved the world- “together, like we should have been the first time.”

Tony shook his head and pulled away, but Steve was already taking his hand, the right one, the one full of infinity stones. He felt the burn of them when his fingers brushed them, but he didn’t let up. “Just trust me,” he hissed in blind panic, “the power shared means the power halved, so just _trust me and let us do this together.”_

Thanos laughed at them both as he turned his head to face them. Tony was bloody and bruised and exhausted, and he looked at Steve and Steve looked back at him, something that transcended words passing between them as Thanos spoke, an unbearably egotistical declaration about him being ‘inevitable’.

Tony nodded imperceptibly, the final proof that this was it; that Tony truly did trust him blindly. After all these years, all the hardships, Tony was letting Steve hold his hand on the battlefield and obeying his word, even it killed both of them.  
But it wouldn’t. Steve was sure of it.

Tony turned his head back to face Thanos, watching as he clicked in triumph, expecting a result. When nothing happened, Steve couldn’t help but laugh, and he lifted their joined hands, Tony flexing his fingers to show off the shining stones. Steve laid his hand over them and felt it burn, felt his whole body vibrate with an energy he didn’t even have the words to describe. Something started to buzz in his head, a collection of conversation fragments, images, a picture of himself and Maria sitting on their boat as it floated across the lake. He realised that it was Tony; his thoughts, his mind. The infinity stones were connecting them together into one shared consciousness, and he felt it when Tony came to the same realisation, because there was a strange sense of familiarity that filled him up from head to toe. Even through the pain. Even through the noise.

It felt like someone was saying, ‘Oh. There you are’.

Tony raised his eyebrows at Thanos and clenched his jaw, mouth opening, because he would never in his life let someone else had the last word. “And we’re the fucking Avengers,” he growled, before Steve’s mind was filled with a string of _‘Get rid of Thanos and his army, get rid of them, turn them to dust’._

Steve squeezed down on the gauntlet and copied the thoughts, amplified them between himself and Tony, Light exploded around them, a white so bright that Steve could see nothing apart from it, and he screamed in an agony he couldn’t even describe, thinking about Maria and Tony and their boat on the lake, and how they’d be able to go there soon, if this didn’t work out.

 _Boat on the lake,_ Steve thought as his body hit the ground beside Tony’s. He looked at his husband, both their hands still attached to one another, and Tony smiled.

 _Yeah,_ his husband replied gently, squeezing their fingers together gently, _Boat on the lake._

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

The Avengers found them on the battlefield, side by side, chest to chest, still holding onto one another’s hands as they lay amongst the rubble of the world they’d just saved.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

When Steve woke up, it was slowly. Painfully.

Surprisingly, too, if he was being honest. He didn’t think someone could hurt that much and walk away alive.

He couldn’t open his eyes despite being conscious, but he could hear something. Faint and quiet, and yet still soothing. Steve felt his mind settle at the sound, and as he became more aware, he realised that it was a quiet rendition of ‘Back in Black’, various parts of it hummed as the singer forgot the lyrics.

The gentlest of hands, too small to be an adult’s, settled on his leg. The singing stopped, replaced with: “Am I allowed to draw unicorns on his cast?”

 

_Maria._

 

Steve tried so hard to open his eyes, to make that last final leap into consciousness so that he could see his baby again, but no matter how hard he tried, it wasn’t enough to will himself awake. Even now, he could feel himself slipping again, falling back down deeper, the voices getting further away.

He wondered what had happened. How he’d gotten here. Whether everything really was okay now.

“He might be a little sore right now, sugarsnap. But I’ll let you draw on mine, if you really want,” Tony’s voice filtered through the haze, and oh.

_Oh._

Steve’s heart soared, and inside his head, he laughed with relief joy. They’d both done it. Steve had been right.

He had his family, and the universe had its inhabitants back, and everything was going to be okay.

 

With a sigh of happiness, he drifted back off again.

 

\--

 

Recovery was slow going, not just for Steve and Tony, but for the whole world.

There were so many things that needed to be done. Families who needed to be reunited. Streets that had to be cleaned and announcements that had to be made. But people were too busy celebrating, and honestly, none of the Avengers were inclined to stop them. Humanity deserved their happiness. They deserved to sing and dance on the streets, hugging the friends and family that they’d thought were gone for good.

As for Steve and Tony, their celebrations ran more along the lines of ‘I moved my leg today’ and ‘I think I’ve found a way to improve the dexterity of this prosthetic, you know’. Steve had been hospitalised for two weeks before he’d even been able to sit up on his own, and despite the serum running through him, he was still taking a long time to recover. He had harnessed the power of the universe, after all. Half of it, anyway. Apparently if he’d been baseline, it would have killed him instantly. As it was, the serum had managed to absorb some of the power and use it to speed up regeneration to a rapid degree for a brief second or so, and so while simultaneously killing him, the infinity stones kept him alive. He was set to make a full recovery.

Tony hadn’t been so lucky, Steve found out when he awoke. Tony was baseline human, but his saving grace had been the suit, which again, had absorbed as much of the power as it could and then expended it before it could cause damage. There had still been a massive concentration of heat and power though, and most of it had been centred around Tony’s arm.

It was still shocking, sometimes, to turn around and see the empty shirtsleeve where his husband’s right arm should have been. But Tony was taking it like a champ, and already designing a prosthetic that was slick enough to work just as well, if not better, than an average arm. Because of course he was. That was just Tony Stark. Time travel in a night, Infinity Gauntlet in an evening.

Steve’s soulmate was a genius, and no loss of limb could ever hold that man back.

There was also another little nugget of information that had been quite interesting to find out upon awaking, and it was that he could still hear inside Tony’s head. Not quite as clearly as when they’d both been holding onto the infinity stones, and it faded with distance, but according to Thor, the stones must have permanently created a link between their minds, joining them together like magnets. Even now that they were gone, their impact still remained. Now, if Maria was curled up in Thor’s lap sleeping in their joint hospital room, they didn’t need to risk waking her up in order to talk.

It was pretty neat, to say the least.

 

Eventually both of them were discharged, Steve’s serum having healed him to the point where he could walk with ease on his own. There was still an ache in him, deep down, something he wasn’t quite sure how to explain, but that was okay. Maybe he was just getting old—something he was surprisingly okay with, to be honest. And of course, the second that Tony had gotten into his workshop back home, he’d been instantly designing a high-tech prosthesis for himself, chattering away to Maria as she watched in fascination. Steve didn’t doubt that she was going to grow up a genius. The rate that she took in information was incredible, and under Tony’s gentle encouragements, she thrived and was desperate to learn more about everything she could get her curious little hands on. Steve was happy to just sit back, make them dinner and watch events unfold in front of him.

“How does it feel,” Tony had asked when it was finally finished, lifting it up and touching it against Steve’s cheek. It was incredible, how… how real, it looked. If not for all the missing scars and marks that Steve had long since memorised on Tony’s old hand, Steve wasn’t sure whether he’d even have known it was a prosthetic at all. Hell, even the hairs were the same.

He smiled in disbelief, tilting his head to press a kiss into the centre of Tony’s new palm. It wasn’t warm, and that was a little strange. But it was nothing that Steve couldn’t handle. “It feels like you,” he declared, and then pulled Tony into the tightest of hugs, happy to just stand there in the workshop and hold Tony close.

Since then, it was almost safe to say that things had been pretty much plain-sailing from there. Comparatively, anyway.

They’d been through it all. They’d travelled through time and space, fought battles that barely anyone could ever dream of, and they’d saved the universe. They had the scars to prove it, both physical and mental. There were times when neither of them could sleep for days—periods where one of them had to leave home for a little while so that they wouldn’t upset Maria. It wasn’t easy. Of course it wasn’t. Things in their life never were. But it was worth it. Without question.

 _‘You sound so cheesy, you know,’_ Tony informed him silently, knocking against Steve’s shoulder and swaying on the little boat they were sat on. Maria was over at the other end, floating her hand through the water and watching as the fish swam by, and of course, she was oblivious to their conversation. Everyone else in the world couldn’t even hear them.

Maybe this was the Universe’s way of assuring that they never had to keep secrets again; never had to hide the truth or evade talking about things. Possibly annoying if Steve had to hide anniversary gifts, but ultimately something Steve was grateful for. He had nothing to hide from Tony any more.

“It was me,” he said, using his voice this time, just because sometimes holding conversation inside his brain just gave him headaches, “all this time. When we first talked after the battle of New York, and I saw Loki’s duplicate of me, he told me that Bucky was alive. It was the thing that—well, began our friendship, I guess. I’d always thought it was Loki.”

Tony blinked at him in confusion, before the realisation dawned on him and his mouth dropped wide. “Holy shit,” he murmured, “all along. Wow. That’s…”

“Trippy?” Steve finished, and Tony laughed, nodding his head.

“Yeah. Trippy.”

Steve slid his arm around Tony’s side, pulling him in close and resting his mouth against Tony’s head. He felt warm, and his thoughts were a calm sea. Steve sunk into it. “I added something on, this time ‘round,” he murmured, “I don’t know if I should’ve. But I did. I told him Bucky was alive, and then— _then I told him that he was the one who killed your parents.”_ He said the last part in their heads, not wanting Maria to hear it. Tony stilled against him, before Steve felt an eyebrow lift in surprise.

“So what do you think’s gonna happen to that version, then?” He asked, fingers stroking over Steve’s bare forearm. “The whole Civil War thing might still happen. We still might break up.”

Steve nodded, because it was true. Because he didn’t know enough about time travel to even give a hypothesis, and all he could do was hope. “At least there might not be a rift between us when Thanos comes,” Steve murmured, “at least we have the chance of being together.”

“Papa,” Maria cut into their conversation loudly, sitting up from the boat and making it rock with the suddenness of it, apparently now bored by the fishes, “do we have any ice pops left?”

Tony cocked his head at her incredulously. “You had one literally an hour ago.”

“Yeah, but now I’m _thirsty.”_ She tugged at her hair and folded her arms, looking at Tony with the same face that Tony had pulled so many times on Steve that it made him have to stifle his laughter. He doubted Tony would even last three seconds before caving.

He was right: Tony lasted two. “You know you’re a menace, right?” Tony asked her as he plucked her up and then placed her into his lap, shaking his head at her despairingly, “I should throw you in a dumpster.”

“Noooooo!” Maria giggled and shook her head, and the look on Tony’s face when he looked down at her was filled with enough love that Steve would repeat all his own pain a thousand times over just to see it again. Tony glanced up at him, and Steve figured that the thought must have been loud, because Tony leaned over and caught his mouth in a gentle kiss, Maria still tucked up safely between us.

“You don’t ever have to be in pain again,” Tony whispered against his mouth, “it’s over, Steve. We won.”

Steve placed one hand behind Tony’s neck, kissing him back on their boat, on the lake, with a world at peace after five years of pain. He heard Tony’s heartbeat, and then a second later he picked up Maria’s too, her little body already squirming to move once more, back toward the edge of the boat where could paddle.

He nodded, and smiled into Tony’s kiss. “We won,” he repeated, “and now we can rest."

**Author's Note:**

> Things that are also in my fic that I failed to mention because this whole thing is mess and I wrote it in two days:  
> -Natasha does not die, instead Captain Marvel takes the reality and time stone and heads back to vormir, catching Natasha before she falls but using the reality stone to make Clint _think_ that she's dead. This still brings out the time stone due to Clint truly believing he lost the one he loved. She then brings Natasha back, and everyone hugs and Nat teaches Maria how to throw knives, 2012-styles.  
> -Thor's character is not dragged through the mud by him deciding ''''''to go and fuck off with the guardians'''' (literally fuck off russos Taika is coming to DECAPITATE you), and instead he remains on Earth for a little while longer in order to gather the survivors of Asgard and try and find a new home for them as he planned to do in Thor Three. He comes back to the rebuilt compound every so often in order to steal all of Steve and Tony's poptarts and also goes into Peter Parker's school so that Peter can flex on all his classmates and be That Bitch that knows all the superheroes.  
> I don't know whether this canon compliant and again! I do not care! Thank u and goodnight.


End file.
